Quotes About Peace

In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way. I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library.

and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear...

Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside. It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well.

For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.

The hard silence between frustrated people always feels cluttered. But holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down. We offer it to ourselves when we work, rest, meditate, bike, read. When we hike by ourselves, we hear a silence still pristine with crunching leaves and birdsong. Silence can be a system of peace, which is mercy, easily offered to a friend needing quiet, harder when the person is one's own annoying self.

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant for you to hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean you want to vacation together.

Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever, this is my prayer, O Lord. Amen.

I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security, peace of mind, and even joy are probably not that great. Ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics, ugly financial problems, maybe; but probably not peace of mind. I tell them that I think they ought to write anyway.

What you're looking for is already inside you..You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it, or apply for it. The best job in the world can't give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security.

I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed--which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.

The world can't give that serenity, he said. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts. I hate that, I said. I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.

Forgiving people doesn't necessarily mean you want to meet them for lunch. It means you try to undo the Velcro hook. Lewis Smedes said it best: "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

Whether it's Mt. Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, a liveness, or whatever you want to call it, the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgement, separation from life in yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are - truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

The redwoods are like organ pipes, playing silent chords.

My three prayers are variations on Help, Thanks, Wow. That's all I'll ever need, besides the silence, the pain, and the pause sufficient for me to stop, close my eyes, and turn inward.

Gratitude is peace.

But in surrender you have won.

I'm pretty sure that only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way do we come to be healed—which is to say, we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.

So try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen.

The trees are so huge that they shut you up.

Make me a channel of Thy peace, that where there is hatred, let me sow love, or at least not fertilize the hate with my dainty bullshit.

had to learn to be present without paying quite so much attention to my poor old overamped mind, because this was the source of most of my unhappiness. And it still is. The

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening. Gratitude is peace.

I rest in silence and music and long strides, while Sam rests in noise and motion.